These developments suggest we need to pay more attention to how to make apartment buildings work for residents from many different cultural backgrounds.

This is essential to support social cohesion, or the positive social relationships that bond members of society. When social cohesion is weakened, we see a lack of trust and reductions in people’s sense of belonging and their willingness to participate and help others. This, in turn, can damage people’s health and well-being, as well as fuelling broader political instability.

Increasing density

In 2015, we passed an important, but largely unrecognised, milestone in Australia. It was the first year in the country’s history that dwelling starts for attached properties overtook those for detached houses.

Across the Greater Sydney metropolitan area, for example, 30% of residents live in apartments. In some inner-city suburbs, apartments are home to the vast majority of residents, including in Pyrmont, Zetland and Ultimo (see Table 1 below). Beachside locations such as Surfers Paradise, Queensland, and Glenelg, South Australia, also have high proportions of apartment residents.

Increasing diversity

Apartment residents are very diverse culturally. Across Australia, more than half of apartment residents – 56%, compared to 33% of all Australian residents – are migrants. Of these, the biggest group (26% of apartment residents) are migrants born in Asia.

Nationwide, only 7% of Australian-born people live in apartments. For those born in northeast Asia (including China), the figure is 31%. And for those born in southern and central Asia (including India), it’s 26%.

Looking again at Greater Sydney, housing density and cultural diversity are clearly correlated. The Sydney suburbs where more than 90% of residents live in apartments also have high concentrations of overseas-born migrants.

Challenges of apartment living

While apartment living is unfamiliar to many Australian-born residents, Australian apartment lifestyles and norms can be even further from what migrants are used to. Our research, based on interviews with Sydney-based strata managers, shows that social and cultural differences can contribute to tensions within apartment buildings. These might be about shoes left in common areas, or washing hung on balconies, or “offensive” cooking smells wafting beyond kitchen walls.

Tensions between residents with different lifestyles are not limited to residents from different ethnic or cultural backgrounds. Tensions also arise between residents of different ages, different household types and with different working schedules. Cultural difference is but one of many factors that can contribute to tensions in apartment buildings.

However, strata managers also commented that sometimes new arrivals’ lack of English and lack of familiarity with Australian regulations had prevented them from fully participating in their building by, for example, joining strata committees or attending or speaking at meetings. Sometimes new arrivals were not even aware of basics such as the need to pay strata levies. Quite possibly that’s a result of strata rules and regulations not having been adequately explained to them.

Australian strata regulations and bylaws reflect a particular understanding of what it means to own or live in an apartment. Obligations and opportunities here – for example, the right to vote on motions at meetings – may look very different in other countries.

Apartment residents, strata committees and strata managers are finding that they need to adapt to the reality of their culturally diverse communities. After all, multiculturalism is about acknowledging and respecting difference.

Fostering cohesion

As we have previously discussed, more inclusive practices – such as translating documents and meeting discussions, conducting audits and surveys of building residents, and providing a range of opportunities for participation – will benefit all residents and owners, regardless of their background.

While multicultural apartment blocks may pose challenges, they also offer opportunities for residents to enjoy the richness of a diverse and cosmopolitan environment. This is one of the enormous attractions of urban life. For many apartment residents, it’s available on an everyday level.

With growing numbers of urban residents living in apartment buildings that are also culturally diverse, more efforts to foster co-operation and understanding are vital for realising the potential of these urban spaces to become productive hubs of everyday multiculturalism in Australia.

About the author

Christina Ho

Christina Ho is a Senior Lecturer in Social and Political Sciences at the University of Technology Sydney. She researches migration and multiculturalism in Australia, and her current work focuses on ethnicity, inequality and education. Her publications include 'For those who've come across the seas...' Australian Multicultural Theory, Policy and Practice, and Beyond the Hijab Debates: New Conversations on Gender, Race and Religion.

About the author

Edgar Liu

Edgar Liu is a Research Fellow at City Futures Research Centre, Faculty of Built Environment, the University of New South Wales. His research interests are in the humanistic and social aspects of housing and urban life. Currently he is co-editor to 2 volumes - Place and Placelessness Revisited (Routledge, May 2016) and Multigenerational Family Living (Routledge, November 2016) - as well as project manager and researcher to a number of externally funded research projects on public estate renewals, the community housing sector, and barriers that lower income households face in reducing carbon consumption.

About the author

Hazel Easthope

Hazel is an Associate Professor at the City Futures Research Centre at the University of New South Wales.

Hazel has been working in the area of housing and urban research for over 10 years. She has undertaken research examining private rental housing, home ownership and social housing. Much of her research has focused on housing and planning policy, residential decision-making and residential satisfaction.

Since joining City Futures in 2007, much of Hazel's research has focused on apartment living and strata titled developments. She is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow, is regularly invited to speak at industry and professional forums, and has received awards from the Planning Institute of Australia and Strata Community Australia (NSW) for her work on strata title developments.

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